Mile High vinyl guide: Where to buy, and listen to, records in the Denver area

The cavernous Twist and Shout is one of Denver’s most popular record stores, and for good reason. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

Audiophiles love the physical format. Ask most music fans and they’ll tell you they’d rather be holding a limited-edition color vinyl or hard-to-find cassette tape than plucking songs out of thin, digital air.

To wit: Vinyl sales have been climbing steadily, rising 20.4 percent in 2017 — a continuation of vinyl’s 2016 surge, according to BuzzAngle’s mid-year report.

It’s a stat that’s reflected in the healthy glow of record store marquees around Denver. With that in mind, we dug through the bins and brains behind the Front Range’s favorite record stores to find out why the stores are still spinning.

Black and Read

Specialty: Punk and underground

Nerding out in a vinyl shop is a common occurrence among crate creatures, but where do you go when you have a hankering for Magic The Gathering and The Misfits? Easy. Arvada's Black & Read. The store (opened in 1991) regularly hosts Magic tournaments among other games. Split down the middle, the 10,000-square-foot space is books, collectibles and video games on one side and all music on the other. Musically, the shop focuses more on "underground" and indie offerings (lots of punk and metal, too), but doesn't discriminate: You can find gems in there like N.W.A. or The Mamas and The Papas.

Music manager and buyer Sylas Cooley explained of the roughly 75,000 records for sale, there are some early metal albums, like Metallica's "Kill 'Em All" for $75 and Kreator releases starting at $50, that are currently the cream of the crop.